Topic: Got a new client! :-)

OK; check out this site, www.seavisions.com and then look at my initial play at http://seavisions.ozoniclabs.com/ - I was contacted by this guy Gerry Calabrese, the owner of this place that makes HUGE custom fishtanks, with all sorts of nifty coral reefs (manufactured by a 3d scanner and then hand painted). Neat guy, and am I going to have fun with this site. (Malin will too - this is our first big joint venture, whee! :-)

I have a lot to say about what I'm planning, but I'll do that later, I thought maybe it'd be a good thing if I kind of "thought aloud" here in this thread, let some of you get a peek into my head, and give you a chance to comment on my working methods. This will be a full re-design from the ground up, with a publishing system for all of the installations he's done, eventually a store for the semi-custom tanks, and of course, lots of toys. <g>

I'm (hopefully) just finishing this job for another client and will start working full-time on this one next week, with any luck. If you have any thoughts you'd like to share, feel free to kibitz, I'm still uncertain on exactly what direction we'll go with this, but the client is a cool guy and is going to give me some good freedom to play. Just a heads-up for now, I'll see if I can document my work here, this'll be fun!

Your pal, -doc-

Looking good already! and I do like/appreciate the idea of watching this evolve. thnx

If Gerry hasn't already seen this, don't be standing too close to him when you show him... cuz I think he just mght wanna kiss ya...

[This message has been edited by NoJive (edited 06-13-2002).]

Doc i love the scrolling seabed thing its smooth as hell, your work never ceases to amaze me how long does it take ya to go from whats in ya head into actually making that toy page?
personally speaking i prefer the combo page, i dont know how difficult it would be but could you have animated fish in that moving part it would be the icing on the cake so to speak


[This message has been edited by tomeaglescz (edited 06-13-2002).]

I, too, would go with the 'combo' page. It's very nice, smooth, and really appropriate. And I absolutely love the colors!

And of course, anything would be better than the 'old' website...

Looking forward to 'peeking' into your head, Doc. Thanks for letting us 'come along' for the ride!

Doc: Really nice work already My only concern is that the toy is so good people are going to find themselves sitting and staring at it (the rest of the page is more matte while that is glossy which also tends to draw the eye) - or is that just me.

Would this work better in the site reviews?

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Phew. For a second there, I thought the first version (the pre-existing site) was YOURS. I couldn't believe my eyes. Heheh...

Anywho, just so ya know, I'm using Opera and I get a big horizontal scroll bar on "The Toy" page. The scrolling image on the bottom eventually gets too short and you can see the end. I'm at 1024x768...just thought I'd mention it.

Congrats on your new client Doc, and thank you for the insight in your process.

The toy has a very distinct "Docesque" feel to it, I think, with those horizontal bars and such. The seabottom scrolling thing is amazing.
I think I like the more business-like page the best though. Especially the colors and the background - has a nice underwater feel to it. Love the header picture too. Is that a drawing or a photo?

I like the combo page, but maybe the *more business-like* page with a cursor following fish in the header pic. Maybe even one that loses interest after a bit and gets replaced by another ?

And yea, thanks for opening up the Doc/Malin combo thought process/workflow for us loonies. This`ll be fun. Our first Asylum soap opera...


Cell245

I think this one is awesome. The scrolling floor is awesome too, if you could combine it with this fixed width design as a footer for it, well, that would be sensory overload, which I happen to like on occassion. The header on the link above and the background for the main content area are keepers, awesome.

One thing about the toy, there's no scrollbar on the page so if it gets cut off at the top people might actually get angry/frustrated for wanting to scroll down and see it in all it's glory. Please jam it in at the bottom of the fixed width design as a fixed width element, footer kinda deal! I wanna see!




Jason

Man, those things make my aquarium look like shit! I want a salt water tank but man they are a lot of work and the fish are *really* expensive.

I like the idea of the layout flow chart thingy. I usually draw it out by hand and then work from that. I guess it would be a good idea for the client to be able to see your thought process. Sadly enough, all the pages I have done, the client would probably have not idea what I was showing them.

Very nice work. It is going to interesting to see how you get the background of the tables to look like that. I always find it hard to put "backgrounds" in my tables.

Very nice work Doc!

Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

Ahha!! I have found the origin of the blue border! Happy hunting!

Just hope Malin doesn't mind you using the same design here as you did for the page you made her

She must approve since it is a joint venture.

Good deal with the client Doc. I was really scared for a second when I clicked the first link and thought you did it. But once I found out it was the origional I calmed down quite a bit.

I am pondering on the colors. It doesn't jump at me with, "Read my content, buy our fish tanks." Even though the 8 year old who designed their original site had no sence of design, organization or consistance, the designer still had a capable understanding of contrast (for the most part).

The toy draws me completely away from the content. The text is too suttle. The JPGness of the image might be causing the descepencies, but I am not sure.

I think it is a good start and an entertaining site but I think some more can be done with it so that it is readable.

I actually found a couple of cool pages with an example of what I am talking about with a good use of contrast: http://www.primalcontent.com http://www.znippets.com http://www.primalshape.com

I found these pages really inspiratonal, and really solid.

And now that I finish with my jesting...

Good stuff so far, really neet, the text thing just caught me by surprise, I have never had a problem reading any of the pages you have done before, you contrast always seems to be right on.

I gotta say, as cool as the moving seafloor is, I believe it distracts from the main point of the site, selling fish tanks. Therefore, I am suggesting the "business" orientated page.

edit: if you do decide to go with the floor scroller, you might want to have the surface water scroll in sync as well. This may be even more distarcting, but it may also lend itself to the underwater experience. Just a thought to try.



[This message has been edited by me~ (edited 06-22-2002).]

Run spellcheck on the text in your images on index2.html - example: buisness should be business (perhaps others as well)

Fun toy!

I love what you did here, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing this evolve (and tearing into the source!!) I was curious doc, were you get all your photos? (of the tanks for example). Do you get them from the client, take them yourself or buy stock photos?

* grabs some popcorn and settles down to enjoy the show *

This should be really intersting, thanks for sharing your work process Doc

The pages look great so far, but the Combo page breakes in Mozilla 1.0. The top bar (the bar and the bar with the SeaVisions text in) is pushed down about 73 px so that the bar covers the top of the text making it unreadable. If you fix that I would go for the Combo variant, if not I think the business version is the better of the two. The toy page looks to much like a.. toy



_________________________
Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
- copied from the wall of cell 408 -

Calabrese: I seem to remember that name from my pet store days.

Beautiful site, Doc. I think if anyone has ever been in a store that specializes in aquariums and tropical fish, this site would definitely remind them of that. I like the combo site: the movement is cool, but you also have lots of good information on that page. I also like the watery, curvy shapes in the background on the combo page. Nice touch.

Just a 'bump' don't want this falling off the bottom... cuz sure as hell I'll forgot which forum it was in. <bg>

Looking great Doc

Just one thing I noticed is the combo page (index2.html) runs off the bottom of the page on my computer (Win98SE, MSIE5.5, screen res:800X600), might allow vertical scrolling

Ditto on the "toy" page (index0b.html)

I know it's still early and you would have come across this at some point, if you hadn't already, but just thought I'd throw it out there



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-- Jack of all trades, master of that which has my attention at
the moment.

doc, just wondering if there were any more updates on this site? I just wanted to see how it turned out...

Just in case you missed it on the main page. <bg> http://seavisions.dreamhost.com/